Personally, I’m not brand loyal to any particular OS. There are good things about a lot of different operating systems, and I even have good things to say about ChromeOS. It just depends on what a user needs from an operating system.
Most Windows-only users I am acquainted with seem to want a device that mostly “just works” out of the box, whereas Linux requires a nonzero amount of tinkering for most distributions. I’ve never encountered a machine for sale with Linux pre-installed outside of niche small businesses selling pre-built PCs.
Windows users seem to want to just buy, have, and use a computer, whereas Linux users seem to enjoy problem solving and tinkering for fun. These two groups of people seem as if they’re very fundamentally different in what they want from a machine, so a user who solely uses Windows moving over to Linux never made much sense to me.
Why did you switch, and what was your process like? What made you choose Linux for your primary computing device, rather than macOS for example?
Because Windows customization was too hard and weird. To install a custom theme, I had to browse DeviantArt for some god forsaken reason(???) and trust this random person’s theme, which could contain malware for all I knew! I just wanted to choose colors and change transparency!
Stupid default software: What’s up with Micro$oft Edge? Why do they push it so hard? Just let me set Firefox as the default browser for everything! I want to be able to uninstall things I don’t want on my system, and use whatever apps I want.
So, around 2022, I tried Linux Mint and fell in love with it. I’d heard Apple devices were pretty locked down so the thought of buying a Mac hadn’t crossed my mind (I could not afford one anyways).
I then went on to, over time, try other distros, such as: ArcoLinux (now discontinued), Debian, Artix, KDE Neon, Void, and nowadays I run NixOS on my desktop and Arch on my laptop. (I did try Fedora Sway for a few hours before installing Arch on my laptop though).